My one post about Captain Underpants

Longtime readers might have noticed that I did not blog about the Captain Underpants Bomber from Christmas Day 2009.  Why not?  Well, two three reasons: This might shock you, but there are some issues where I actually like to read first and blog later; Frankly, compared to everything else going on in the world, this ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

Longtime readers might have noticed that I did not blog about the Captain Underpants Bomber from Christmas Day 2009.  Why not?  Well, two three reasons:

Longtime readers might have noticed that I did not blog about the Captain Underpants Bomber from Christmas Day 2009.  Why not?  Well, two three reasons:

  • This might shock you, but there are some issues where I actually like to read first and blog later;
  • Frankly, compared to everything else going on in the world, this was not terribly interesting to me;
  • On occasion, laziness pays in the blogosphere — if you wait long enough, someone will write exactly what you want to say, and then all you have to do is link to them.

Peter Beinart, Marc Lynch and Fareed Zakaria have already said 90% of what I wanted to say.  My only additional observation is one I’m reluctant to bring to the attention of terrorists,  but the professor in me can’t resist. 

It’s striking how Al Qaeda and its emanations have demonstrated zero creativity in their past decade of attempts to strike the United States.  It’s all about airplanes, airplanes, airplanes — even though their ability to use the planes themselves as large bombs has been effectively neutralized. 

Any Hollywood hack  could devise far more inventive acts of terrorism — which is why I think we need to treat those hacks the same way we treat nuclear scientists.  Don’t ever let Michael Bay shoot on location in Yemen (I confess to being on the fence about Megan Fox and/or Shia Labeouf). 

Beyond that, everyone just relax a bit. 

[Drat!!–ed.  C’mon, pay up.  I was sure you couldn’t connect Captain Underpants to Megan Fox!!–ed.  And that’s why I get the big blog bucks, my imaginary friend.]

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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